Monday, August 19, 2013

Understanding What Comes From A Character's Crazy Mind

In order to write compelling
characters, you have to understand something about people.

It's something deep.Something foundational.You have to really be able to
understand what motivates your character.What drives them to do the things they do.What makes them tick, and what ticks them off.

If you don't understand those
things about your character, or aren't in the process of discovering them and
looking for them, your character will just be a placeholder, made to do
arbitrary things to serve the plot.

TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the
choices a human being makes under pressure--the greater the pressure, the
deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential
nature.

--Robert
Mckee

The phenomenal Anne Frasier
asked a question, several years ago, on her blog.Are authors broken?It generated 50+ comments, and has lingered on my mind all these years
later, because it got me looking within myself.

I grew up in a fast and
confusing fashion.The long
shadows of old secrets darkened the world around me, even when I was too young
to understand that.What I
understood what the shadow of the darkness, and what I grew up wondering about
was the why.

My mom was undiagnosed
bipolar when I was growing up.I
didn't understand that.I don't
think she did either.It took a
lot of strength and courage for my mom to face that when I was an adult, and I
feel it's even delicate to share about that now, but her situation affected me
on a deep level.

I didn't grow up surrounded
by women who went to college.I
didn't grow up surrounded by women who had independent careers.Most of them had family businesses they
ran with their husbands - my parents included.

Many women I knew had also
gotten pregnant before getting married.Back then, people did the right thing.

As with all things, there
were varying degrees of happiness to be found amongst those people.Closer to home, I could only say that
things weren't usually what I'd call happy.There was a problem, and I could never quite put my finger
on it as a kid, but I grew up expecting the next problem.I grew up waiting for shoes to drop.

Like the night I woke up, and
instantly, in the dark, in the middle of the night, knew something was
wrong.I found myself running down
the stairs, starting the register a distant noise that wasn't right for a
nighttime sound.I found myself
pounding on a locked door, yelling, "Let me in."

My parent, inside, screamed
back, "Let me out!"Someone was in there, they were being attacked.There were bangs and thumps and my
heart was pounding with fear.In
the days before 911 and cell phones, there wasn't much I could do.When the lock finally clicked off and
the door opened, I expected the attack to follow.

Instead, there was my parent,
alone.Hallucinating after taking
an overdose of pills.

What followed was the long
drive to the hospital, the drama as they tried to fight off hospital staff,
four days in intensive care, and then a mandatory
admittance to a hospital in Penetanguishene.

Now, some might think that
it's wrong of me to share about this here.That it's private business.I don't do this to shame anyone.You have no idea how strong I think my
mom is.My grandfather died in a
mental institution when she was so young, and she barely remembers him.My grandmother had issues of her
own.There was a rape and a
half-brother my mom had that the truth didn't come out about until I was
16.

If I were to try to tell you
what I even know of my mom's story, it would take weeks.

These days, someone doesn't
make the cheerleading squad or football team and they're killing the
competition or in therapy for how unfair life is and everyone should excuse their behavior.

My mom got her education, she
went to college when I was young, and she's spent decades at the helm of a successful
business.

Me?Man, I looked at the world around me when I was young, and I
didn't want that.I may not have
really known what I wanted, but I knew I didn't want to find myself in a trap I
couldn't get out of.

Motivation.The motivation in my life came deep and
young and over many years of not being sure what was wrong, but knowing
something was, and wanting to escape but feeling compelled to fix things.

You see, my motivation
affected my choices on so many levels.I surrounded myself with clean kids by going to church, although I was
raised somewhere between agnostic and atheist.There was no way I was going out on Saturday night and
getting drunk, and there was no way I was getting myself chained down by
getting pregnant.

Simple people might have
called me a prude.Or a snob.

The truth is, I was a person
constantly working on making sure I wouldn't get trapped anywhere I didn't want
to be.

And I still find myself, on
many levels, anticipating problems.I spent so many years on alert for the pendulum swing that comes from
living with a bipolar parent** that I still watch for the problems, all the
time.At work, in general life, at home.

This is part of why I'm a
stickler for doing the right thing, and part of why I'm not big on
secrets.Secrets have a way of
biting you in the ass sooner or later.

And doing the right
thing?With everything my mom and
her siblings endured as kids, where were the teachers?Where were the people who should have
realized they weren't eating because they didn't have food?Why didn't anyone care enough to do
something to help them?

It's so easy for people to
turn a blind eye to abuse, neglect, and to people with real, serious life
problems.

I don't respect that. Certainly not if it's a situation where you're witnessing the problem day after day after day.I know I can't solve everyone's issues,
but I also know that when I worked in the school system, I was bound by laws to
report concerns, and if I had them, I did.From the kids who weren't eating at lunch and snack time to
the kid who told me he was going to slit his throat.

And to this day, if I see
someone who is negligent, or someone who I think is being mistreated, I'm not
going to keep my mouth shut.

It's part of who I am.

Yeah, I went through some crap as a kid. But I didn't let that be my excuse to do drugs or screw around or become an alcoholic. I let it be my motivation to get out and get an education and do things with my life.

Because, like my mom, I'm stronger than all that shit, and that's nothing I'm ever going to feel ashamed of because of people who are weak and careless.

Believe it or not, I'm far
more relaxed now than I ever was as a teen or young adult.Part of that comes from a sense of
security.I married a man who's as
complicated and, at times, confused as I am.

I could tell his story, but
all it serves to explain is how I understand what drives him.How I understand what his priorities
are.

Every single day, I see him
making his number one priority trying to give the kids the understanding and
patience he feels he never got as a kid.

Giving them room to make
mistakes and the security of knowing they're still loved.That they won't be discarded the way he
was.

Some people use their pains
and problems as an excuse to bully others.

Some tap into it and use it
as direction, to help them avoid making the mistakes others made that hurt
them.

Those are the strong people,
the people of substance.The
people worth knowing.

And if you understand what
motivates me as a person, you understand why I think that.

I still find myself wondering
about that old blog post of Anne's, and if the best writers must be broken
people first.Is it possible to
understand anguish, torment, the depths of the deepest grief if you have not
experienced these things?

Is it possible to understand
compassion if you have none?

I was talking to Brian about
this yesterday.Other than grammar and punctuation, the most common
thing I seem to comment on in texts I review is
about content.It needs to advance
the plot or reveal pertinent information related to the plot or central
characters.If it doesn't, it
almost always can be cut.

It all ties to motivation.It ties to the very depths of what
motivates people to do the things they choose to do.

And if you want the
characters in your stories to resonate with a sense of believability, you need
to understand what drives them.

Or at the very least, be on the
journey of discovery, trying to peel off the layers to get to the core of what
makes them tick.

The trouble
with too many contemporary novels is that they are full of people not worth
knowing. The characters slide in and out of the mind with hardly a ripple. They
levy no tax on the memory; they make little claim on the connecting power of
identification. They make only the skimpiest contribution to an understanding
of the human situation. They leave you cold.

Norman
Cousins

** I don't
mean to lay everything at my mother's door. My dad's problems are, in many respects, far more complex
and damaging. The real issue is
that he's never publicly owned them, and because of that, I can't talk about
them, to this day.

Well my father put a shame on me. Said he wouldn’t put his name on
me. Said he wouldn’t be the first in his family Who’s son cried when he
was born. Well he died the day i got a gun. Said that he was proud that
I’s his son that that was right there in his plan I’d grow up and be a
man. And there was a tear. I saw it in his eye. He said he couldn’t
think of a better way to dieAnd the Lord came down and put a spoon in my mouth. It tasted so
bitter, but I couldn’t spit it out. It tasted like the money that my
poor mama made. When I went and stole it, cause she took it to the
grave. And there was a note clenched in her right hand, Said boy if you
wanna live, better die like a brave man.I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s
death. I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave
man’s death. Spittin gasoline, burnin my teeth, getting salt on the
fields of my past. And the sword will come down with a milky white
flash And I’ll get my brave man’s death at last.I had a woman. And she had some kids. She said she loved them, I
never did. Just the way that they feed And take away what was young.
But my wife’s a muscle that can do what needed to be done. And the day
that she died, her cup was fully drained. She said take hope my love,
that life was worth the painI don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave man’s
death. I don’t wanna die in the middle of the night, I want a brave
man’s death. Spittin gasoline, burnin my teeth, getting salt on the
fields of my past. And the sword will come down with a milky white flash
And I’ll get my brave man’s death at last.I had a heart that’s willin but a back without a bone. My body’d go
to war, but my head would come home And I always had a knife in case a
real man came along. He turned his head and his life was gone. So I hold
it in my heart, yeah I hold it in my heart.
No, I hide it in my heart, cause it’s tearin me apart. The last thing that he said to me was blood was on my handsOh god, I wanna die like a man.

4 comments:

Thank you for sharing your story. And you're damn right. I don't need any friends or fans who don't believe that doing the right thing matters.I have a relative who stopped me from helping push a woman's car off the road. His reasoning? "No one would help you, if you needed it!" Yeah, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he's the least happy person I know. Me, I'm happy. Even with all the bad in the world I know I can never stop or prevent. Why? Because I do what I can, when I see it, like you do.

Yes, of course, thanks for sharing. A heart-rending, thought-provoking post.

if I may..."Is it possible to understand compassion if you have none?" No. That is the flaw of the "dark side" (See Booker's 7 Plots). imho, that may be the only thing one must experience, or possess, in order to write about it.

"I still find myself wondering about that old blog post of Anne's, and if the best writers must be broken people first. Is it possible to understand anguish, torment, the depths of the deepest grief if you have not experienced these things? "

The best writers do not have to be broken. They do, however, have to live open and live raw. Can experiences be understood if one has not experienced them? Intellectually, yes. So if a writer - a keen observer and empathizer - encounters anguish, torment, etc. it does not have to be his or her own in order for that writer to convey the emotional (or spiritual) truth of the experience. But "understand" the way you're using the word - to know it - is an experiential kind of understanding. The experiences do not have to be as personally traumatic as yours, but they have to be paradigm shifters. (How many young boys in 1957 experienced anguish and the deepest grief when Old Yeller got shot?)

"And to this day, if I see someone who is negligent, or someone who I think is being mistreated, I'm not going to keep my mouth shut. "

Huge amounts of applause!!

Yes, thanks deeply for this post.

The beauty of "I'm a stickler for doing the right thing, and part of why I'm not big on secrets" is that one follows the other.

Thanks guys. And I think the idea that they must live open and raw sums it up perfectly. I think anyone who is shut off to the complexities of the human experience limits themselves, and that will come through.